HOW does one begin to describe the lives endured by those trapped in the poverty of Nairobi’s slums? Even by Africa’s own terrible standards, these shanty towns on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital are among the most volatile and squalid on the continent.
Short of being totally destitute or dead, places like Mathare, Kibera, Korogocho and other giant slum districts are the last stop for the millions of people who live there.
Accurate figures are elusive, but as many as 700,000 people are known to have crammed into Mathare alone, in an area two miles long by one mile wide. Violence in these slums is endemic.
A few years ago during one visit, only made possible with an escort of local gang members, I entered the backstreets of Korogocho. Within seconds I came across bystanders gathered around a young woman who lay slumped in the mud of an alleyway no broader than the width of a coffin.
A young man had stabbed her, they said. No one knew for sure the reason why. Maybe the attacker had wanted her old, near-useless mobile phone. Then again she was found barefoot, so perhaps he’d knifed her before making off with her cheap flip-flop sandals.
The desperation to survive here leads people to do desperate things. In a place where people live on less than a dollar a day, money is everything. This is something unscrupulous politicians realise, and exploit whenever the need compels them. Sadly, next week could well be one such instance, as Kenya once again goes to the polls in a general election.
Already the poll has raised the familiar spectre of violence, a decade on from another presidential election during which ensuing clashes left more than 1,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes.
Politics in Kenya have always been closely linked with ethnicity. Kenya’s leaders and their inner circle have regularly ensured that land ownership and political posts are primarily given to members of their own ethnic group.
When things don’t go a politician’s way, violence is easily stoked up by paying supporters within impoverished slum communities to take to the streets. Suffice to say that with more than 61 per cent of Kenyans in cities living in slums, this makes for a potentially large and disruptive force.
Understandably then, there is a lot of unease ahead of next Tuesday’s vote. Only this week the tension was ratcheted up even further with the brutal murder of Christopher Msando, the man in charge of Kenya’s electronic voting system. Mr Msando had been missing for three days, and was tortured before being murdered.
Taken on its own Mr Msando’s death is a brutal act. It’s also a worrying escalation of the suspicion and instability which in the last few weeks has seen Kenya’s current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, warning the judiciary not to interfere in the election and Somali militants linked to al-Qaeda carrying out a spate of attacks.
It’s easy to think of Kenya’s elections as being some isolated event without any real wider significance, but that would be wrong. Next Tuesday’s vote and how it is conducted along with its outcome matter not just to Kenyans, but also very significantly to the rest of the African continent and world at large.
To begin with, Nairobi is East Africa’s economic hub, and the country is the second-largest economy in the region. The Kenyan port of Mombasa is vital as a transport corridor to land-locked countries like Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Should the elections disrupt this route, as happened after the 2007 election when there was widespread violence, the price of everyday goods in many of these countries, some already very vulnerable, could rise significantly, with dire consequences. South Sudan especially, a country facing famine, would find itself utterly at the mercy of Kenya’s election if it fails to be trouble-free.
Allied to this is the fact Nairobi is headquarters to key UN and humanitarian agencies, whose relief work could be severely hampered. This not least in north-eastern Kenya itself, where the huge Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s biggest, is home to more than half a million displaced people, mostly from neighbouring Somalia.
All the food and medicine needed for Dadaab’s refugees is coordinated from Nairobi, and widespread election violence would almost certainly grind that operation to a halt.
Then there are the security implications for Kenya itself and beyond. Few of us will forget those terrifying images from the Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi in 2013 in which 67 people died. Al-Shabaab, the Islamist terror group linked to al-Qaeda from across the border in Somalia, claimed responsibility, and continues to have a presence in Kenya.
Kenya has some 3,600 troops in Somalia as part of an African Union peacekeeping mission in the country, and depending on the result of the election, those troops could be withdrawn with all the security implications that might have for the growth of al-Qaeda’s franchise in Somalia.
The world, and notably the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be watching closely too as to how both the major candidates, Mr Kenyatta and rival Raila Odinga conduct themselves.
Let’s not forget that last time around in 2007 Mr Kenyatta subsequently spent some time at the ICC in The Hague defending himself against allegations of inciting ethnic violence during the election.
The bottom line here is that there is much more to Kenya than its tourist reputation as a place of exotic safaris and picturesque beaches. About 40 per cent of people still live below the poverty line, with high rates of youth unemployment and corruption still plaguing the country.
Given its role too as a nascent democracy, regional economic powerhouse and security ally, Kenya remains vital to the West’s interests in Africa. Make no mistake about it the credibility of Kenya’s elections is crucial.
US President Donald Trump might have had little to say about Africa in his time in office, but Kenya’s election is a reminder of how events seemingly distant and unrelated to us can have a global impact.
Be it in the slums of Nairobi, refugee camps of South Sudan or in the air- conditioned enclaves of Western diplomatic missions, Kenya’s election and its outcome matters.
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